As the post-pandemic economy moves faster towards full-on digitization, major financial groups in Korea are mired in a silent war over dominance in the financial data business.

It’s obvious that the global pandemic has accelerated the financial sector’s digital initiatives as social distancing and contactless trends have become the new norm. Yet the nation’s financial industry had long been bracing itself for the development of the data sector even before the impact of COVID-19.

MyData business plan

Back in summer of 2018, the Korean government announced its plan to foster and expand the country’s data industry by 2022. One key state-led pilot program, called the “MyData” project, allowed people to have the right to “data portability” ― the public’s strengthened control over the right to compile their own information on web sites.

Under the plan, financial institutions are obliged to provide customers’ personal information to a third party approved by the government as a MyData business operator, which would then provide a comprehensive set of financial information back to the customer, whenever they decided to browse their own information at one easy glance on a site or on a mobile app.

Until recently, personal financial information had been exclusively left in the hands of each financial institute, making it almost impossible for such data to be conveniently gathered and viewed together.

According to the Financial Supervisory Commission earlier this month, 116 companies, including 55 financial firms, 20 fintech firms, and non-financial companies, expressed intent to apply for the MyData business, during a preliminary survey conducted from May 16 to 28 to figure out the number of potential companies interested in the new realm of business. The financial authority is slated to announce more details about the MyData project sometime in the next month.

Data bills passing parliament

This new finance business model based on data has become possible as the National Assembly passed “three data bills” in early January this year ― three long-pending revisions on the Personal Information Protection Act, Information and Communications Network Act and Protection of Credit Information Act ― aiming to ease regulations on the use of big data encompassing personal information for businesses.

Against this backdrop, it is a natural consequence that each major financial group in Korea has focused on strategic plans to advance into the data market to reap the most out of it.

As market analysts point out, data is not something as depreciable as other tangible goods; rather its value increases more and more, when other pieces of data are added. That’s why financial firms are hurriedly seeking to glean as much as they can while developing new profit models using such data.